Ionic foot
The ionic is the name of a tetrasyllabic (4-syllable) metrical feet used in ancient Greek and Latin poetry, and occasionally found in English verse. Ionics in classical poetry In classical literature, an ionic foof is "either two long syllables followed by two short syllables (greater Ionic) or two short syllables followed by two long syllables (lesser Ionic).""Ionic," Poetry Glossary, Answers.com, Web, July 31, 2011. The greater (or major) ionic is also called a double trochee, and the lesser (or minor) ionic is also called a double iamb. Like the choriamb, in classical quantitative verse the ionic never appears in passages meant to be spoken rather than sung.James Halporn, Martin Ostwald, and Thomas Rosenmeyer, The Meters of Greek and Latin Poetry (Hackett, 1994, originally published 1963), pp. 29–31. "Ionics" may also be used as a general term, to refer inclusively to poetry composed of the various metrical units of the same total quantitative length (six morae) that may be used in combination with ionics proper: ionics, choriambs, and anaclasts.Halporn et al., Meters, p. 125. In English In English poetry , the minor ionic foot, or double iamb, is equivalent to a pyrrhus (a foot of 2 unstressed syllabless) followed by a spondee (a foot of 2 stressed syllables). Like the choriamb, it is allowed as a substitution, for two iambs, in iambic verse. In English poetry, Edward Fitzgerald composed in a combination of anacreontics and ionics.Edwards, p. 79. An example of English ionics occurs in lines 4 and 5 of the following lyric stanza by Thomas Hardy: :The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbed :In mental scenes no longer orbed :By love's young rays. Each countenance :::Às ìt slówlý, às ìt sádlý :::Caùght thè lámplíght's yèllòw glánce, :Held in suspense a misery :At things which had been or might be.Thomas Hardy, "Beyond the Last Lamp" (1914), lines 8–14, as scanned by Edwards, Sound, Sense, and Rhythm, p. 80. The line "Held in suspense a misery" is a choriamb; the rest is iambic. Compare W.B. Yeats :"And the WHITE BREAST of the DIM SEA" :("Who will GO DRIVE with FerGUS NOW?" from The Countess Cathleen) - and Tennyson, "In Memoriam: :When the BLOOD CREEPS and the NERVES PRICK. In classical meter Examples of ionics Pure examples of Ionic metrical structures occur in verse by Alcman (frg. 46 PMG = 34 D), Sappho (frg. 134-135 LP), Alcaeus (frg. 10B LP), Anacreon, and the Greek dramatists,Halporn et al., Meters, p. 23. including the first choral song of Aeschylus' Persians and in Euripides' Bacchae.Graham Ley, The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy (University of Chicago Press, 2007), 139, citing the work of Dale (1969). Like dochmiacs, the ionic meter is characteristically experienced as expressing excitability.Ley, The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy, 171; Edwards, Sound, Sense, and Rhythm, p. 68, note 17. The form has been linked tentatively with the worship of Cybele and Dionysus.Ley, The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy, 139, citing the work of Dale (1969). An example of pure ionics in Latin poetry is found as a "metrical experiment" in the Odes of Horace, Book 3, poem 12, which draws on Archilochus and Sappho for its content and utilizes a metrical line that appears in a fragment of Alcaeus.Paul Shorey, Horace: Odes and Epodes (Boston, 1898), p. 346. The anacreontic may be analyzed as a syncopated form of ionics, ‿ ‿ — ‿ — ‿— —. The galliambic is a catalectic ionic tetrameter;Halporn et al., Meters, p. 23. Catullus used galliambic meter for his Carmen 63 on the mythological figure Attis, a portion of which is spoken in the person of Cybele. Ionic a minore and a maiore The "ionic" almost invariably refers to the basic metron ‿ ‿ — —, but this metron is also known by the fuller name ionic ''a minore'' in distinction to the rarely used ionic ''a maiore'' (— — ‿ ‿). Modern metricians generally consider the term ionic a maiore to be of little analytic use, a vestige of Hephaestion's "misunderstanding of metre"Kiichiro Itsumi, "What's in a Line? Papyrus Formats and Hephaestionic Formulae," in Hesperos: Studies in Ancient Greek Poetry Presented to M. L. West on his Seventieth Birthday, OUP, 2007, p. 317, in reference to Hephaestion's description of Book IV of the Sapphic corpus as "ionic a maiore acatalectic tetrameter." and desire to balance metrical units with their mirror images.J. M. van Ophuijsen, Hephaestion on Metre, Leiden, 1987, p. 98. Polyschematist sequences The Ionic and Aeolic meters are closely related, as evidenced by the polyschematist unit x x — x —‿ ‿ — (with x representing a syllable that may be heavy or light).Halporn et al., Meters, p. 25. The sotadeion, named for the Hellenistic poet Sotades, has been classified as ionic a maiore by Hephaestion and by M. L. West.Hephaestion on Metre, pp. 106f. It "enjoyed a considerable vogue for several centuries, being associated with low-class entertainment, especially of a salacious sort, though also used for moralizing and other serious verse."West, Greek Metre, pp. 144f. Among those poets who adopted it was Ennius.Frances Muecke, "Rome's First 'Satirists': Themes and Genre in Ennius and Lucilius," in The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 36. Tetrasyllables References External links * Ionics, in Erling B. Holtsmark's Enchiridion of Metrics * Comprehensive list of feet and colas up to 12 syllables long * Prosody Tutorial by H.T. Kirby-Smith Category:Poetic rhythm Category:Metrical feet Category:Ancient Greek poetry